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 Authorities said 54-year-old Robert LaVoy Finicum, a rancher from
Arizona who acted as a spokesman for the occupiers at the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge, was armed when he was stopped by police
and killed on Tuesday afternoon.
The aerial video taken by a law enforcement aircraft showed Finicum
speed away from authorities in a white truck and nearly strike a law
officer, while trying to evade a police barricade before barreling
into a snowbank and exiting the car.
The grainy aerial footage shows Finicum raise his hands in the air
and then turn and flail his arms, which lower down to his body
moments before he is shot by Oregon State Police troopers, according
to the FBI.
Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI's Portland office
who narrated the video for reporters, said Finicum can be seen
reaching for his jacket pocket, where law enforcement found a
handgun. But a lack of focus in the video makes it difficult to
discern Finicum's precise movements before the shooting.
 Bretzing told reporters at an evening news conference in Burns,
Oregon, that, while the video showing Finicum's death was
potentially upsetting, it was released "in the interest of
transparency."
The video release came hours after a lawyer for Finicum's family
claimed other evidence may exist that shows the Arizona rancher was
not threatening authorities.
"Based on some things that I've seen, I think there is potentially a
completely different side to the story compared to what is being
represented," Finicum family attorney Todd Macfarlane told Reuters
earlier in the afternoon. He could not be reached for reaction to
the FBI video release.
Macfarlane said one of the sources for his view was the version of
events from Victoria Sharp, who says she was at the scene and
watched Finicum die.
Sharp said in an interview with Reuters Finicum was shot with his
gun in his holster and his hands in the air, shouting and walking
toward police.
Neither state nor federal law enforcement would comment on whether
Sharp was at the scene or on her own detailed description. Reuters
was not able to independently confirm her version of the events
beyond the video released on Thursday.
"HANDS IN THE AIR"
A second occupier detained in Tuesday's action and subsequently
released said an 18-year-old woman was in the car with Finicum and
gave a similar description of the start of the police stop.
“He stepped out, and he started walking, with his hands in the air.
And they actually didn’t shoot him immediately. It took, I’m
guessing, they didn’t shoot him for maybe 15 seconds,” she said. “He
started walking out on the snow and he was shouting. He was saying,
‘if you’re going to shoot me, then just shoot me’.”
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Finicum was one of the most vocal and colorful faces of the
occupiers, a father and rancher who wore a cowboy hat and carried a
gun on his hip. He usually wore a gun in a holster, and he did that
day, Sharp said.
“I’m not sure if it was a hip holster or a leg holster, but I know
the gun was holstered and he did not touch it. He had his hands in
the air,” she said.
The occupation began when leader Ammon Bundy and at least a dozen
followers took over a small cluster of buildings at the refuge on
Jan. 2, in a flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a
decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres in
the West.
Police and federal agents kept their distance from the site, 30
miles (48 km) from Burns, a small rural town in Oregon's rural
southeast, in an effort to avoid a violent confrontation.
But on Tuesday, Bundy and his leadership team left the refuge to
speak at a community meeting in John Day, Oregon, and were stopped
by law enforcement. The stop led to Finicum's fatal shooting and the
arrest of Bundy, along with four others.
Bretzing said four occupiers remained holed up at the refuge
compound on Thursday night, as authorities sought to negotiate with
them to leave. According to the FBI, three of the nine people to
have left the refuge have been taken into custody.
Following his initial court appearance in Portland on Wednesday,
Ammon Bundy urged the holdouts to stand down, saying he would
continue the fight in court.
Reactions to the takeover by Burns residents have ranged from
sympathy for two imprisoned local ranchers whose plight began the
protest, to dismay at the armed occupation by individuals seen as
outsiders.
(Additional reporting Gina Cherelus in New York, Daniel Wallis in
Denver, Victoria Cavaliere and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Curtis
Skinner in San Francisco, and Julia Edwards in Washington; Writing
by Dan Whitcomb and Curtis Skinner; Editing by Edward Tobin, Gareth
Jones and Clarence Fernandez)
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